Easy, light and delicious. Quick prawn, chili and garlic spaghetti

The combination of olive oil, garlic, chili and prawns is just a time tried and tested winner, so there’s nothing new to this dish at all. It’s just such an easy and quick dinner that is quite healthy and very, very tasty. Even though the dish is made up of a limited number of ingredients, they hit so many different notes, each bite feels complete. Plenty of people demonize the notion of adding Parmesan cheese to a seafood dish, honestly, i don’t care, I love it, so feel free to pile on the freshly grated Parm over the finished plate if your heart so desires. Hope you enjoy the recipe below:

Serves 2 as a main course

250ish grams of long pasta, preferably either a spaghetti or a linguine

12 medium prawns, peeled and deveined

6-8 cherry tomatoes, halved

1 tsp of dry chili

2 medium cloves of garlic

About 6 medium-large leaves of fresh basil, roughly torn into 3s

Extra Virgin Olive oil

Zest of 1/4 to 1/2 a lemon

In a wide pan, over a medium to medium-high heat, warm up a couple of tablespoons of olive oil, and then add the garlic and chili, saute about for a few minutes, but do not brown or burn the garlic (about 2-3min) add the tomatoes and toss about for another 3mins or so, finally add the prawns and cook all together until all the prawns become opaque and cooked through, shouldn’t take longer than 5mins, finally toss in half of the basil leaves and lower the heat to just a “warm”.

Cook you pasta in fast boiling and well salted water, and as the pasta cooks, add about two tablespoons of pasta water to the warm prawn mix. About 1min before the pasta’s ready, bring the heat back up on the prawns. Drain pasta and add it to the prawns, mix everything in together on the heat for about 30 seconds, until uniformly mixed, take the pasta off the heat, then add the remaining basil and plate the dishes.

Drizzle the plates with about 1tbsp of Extra Virgin Olive Oil, and sprinkle with the lemon zest and Parmesan (if you so desire) and tuck in and enjoy!